Get Your First

100 Deals in a
New Storm
Efficiently & Effectively
Work New Storms

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ABSTRACT
Canvassing programs need to maximize their ROI in order to get the most from their door to door sales
teams. This guide will show you the top mistakes canvassing programs make and how to correct them,
the best recruiting strategies, and the approach your canvassing team should be following.

CONTACT US:
ADDRESS PHONE EMAIL WEBSITE
11816 Inwood Road 866.212.1250 info@spotio.com https://spotio.com
Suite 162
Dallas, TX 75244

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Contents
Getting Started 4
About Spotio 5

Who Is This For? 6

So, The Storm Hit...

Now What? 7
Determining Where to Work 8

The Importance of Urgency 14

Working Your Numbers 16

Dispatching Your Team 23

Territory Management 24

Knocking Schedule 28

Appointments & Inspections 29

Pulse Check 35
Using Metrics 37

The Best in the Business 41

Ongoing Domination 45
Continuing to Get New Customers 45

Knocking Active Installs 49

Final Overview 54

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 section one
Getting Started
About Spotio
SPOTIO is the #1 canvassing, sales and territory management app for door-to-door and field sales
teams.

Founded in Dallas in 2014, SPOTIO is the fastest and most reliable canvassing app on the market.

Our platform improves your sales team’s efficiency and productivity by eliminating the need for pen and
paper, and providing reps with a tool they can easily use to record the outcome of their attempts in just a
matter of seconds.

The days of self-reported numbers are gone

SPOTIO’s dashboard is second to none, giving managers the insight and analytics they need to monitor
their team’s performance and track their success. We eliminate the guesswork for you with powerful data
and metrics in real-time.

No more worrying about whether or not your sales team is doing what
they say they are
Features like ‘location verification’ and ‘find my team’ allow you to see exactly how far a rep was from
each home they visited for every single attempt they make, preventing you from wasting countless dol-
lars on salespeople not working.

All this and more is what makes SPOTIO the #1 rated canvassing and sales tracking app available.

See the complete list of features, as well as how SPOTIO will help double your team’s productivity in just
two weeks, improve your overall efficiency, increase your revenue and maximize your profitability.

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Who Is This For?
Let’s cut right to the chase and not waste anyone’s time – as an owner or manager in a new storm envi-
ronment, you need a clear system that guides through you all of the steps and how-to’s of face-to-face
marketing to ensure the outcome is positive after a prospect answers their door.

This guide is for the storm restoration companies who don’t just want to compete in a new storm market,
but dominate that market.

The storm restoration is highly, highly competitive. There’s plenty of companies who are fine with being
average and if that’s you, well hey – more power to you. But those that want to take their game to the
next level will use this information to pass you by.

Reach your first 100 deals in a new storm market quicker than you ever have before following the best
practices outlined throughout this eBook.

A few of the industry experts who contributed to this guide:

Anthony Delmedico Shawn Meredith Adam Bensman

CEO, Storm Venture Groups Owner & CEO, Hire A Canvasser Co-Founder, Referral Storm
(SVG)

The idea behind this guide is simple: Help companies get their first 100
deals in a new storm faster than ever before.

5 Key Takeaways
1. Understand the importance of responding first in a new storm environment
2. Understand the importance of territory management to dominate
3. Understand how to use metrics to measure your team’s performance
4. Understand how schedules make your team more efficient
5. Understand how to have continued success after your first 100 deals

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 section two
So, The Storm Hit...
Now What?
Determining Where to Work
The storm restoration industry is extremely crowded and competitive. It moves at an extremely rapid rate
due to the uncertainty of when the next storm will hit, and the number of companies competing to gen-
erate revenue in such close proximity to each other. This is especially true in states like Florida, Illinois,
Minnesota, Texas and Colorado, among others.

Standing In Line… Huh?

We caught up with the guys from Big City Construction in February at Win the Storm. They told several
stories about their team having to stand in line at the door, just waiting for their opportunity to talk to the
homeowner after their competitors had already given their pitch.

Obviously, this situation is less than ideal.

To Avoid This Position:

• Be first to respond in a new storm
• Know where you need to work

Being first at the door eliminates the wait, but that’s impossible to do if you don’t have a strategy for
where you’re going to work when a storm hits. There’s a variety of ways to work an area that’s just expe-
rienced a lot of damage, but due to the vast amount of competition in the industry, it’s critical to be ex-
tremely efficient and effective.

Market Research
Eric Broome, the Operations Manager at Regal
Restoration & Consulting, started in residential
storm restoration in 2001 and has over a decade of
experience in the industry. He’s been with Founder
& CEO, Paul Nolan, since the company was first
established in 2009.

Broome is the perfect person to turn to for lead

generation advice as 99% of Regal’s leads in a
new storm come exclusively from knocking doors.

Regal Restoration’s success is due in large part to

the different strategies they use and their proactive
approach to identifying the areas for their team to
canvass.

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4 Methods To Determine Where To Canvass
1. Look at hail maps – Track storm path, highest amount of volume, monitor roofs with minor damage
2. Look for Signs of Damage – Downed tree limbs, downed power lines, mailbox damage, etc.
3. Look for Emergency Reports – Downed trees, power outages, etc.
4. Contact your Local Material Supplier – They often have significant resources to help you respond
quickly

Utilizing your material suppliers, especially, is a method that is often overlooked, under-utilized or flat-out
unknown. Suppliers are great partners and resources to help determine where to send your team. They
have an interest in your success and value your partnership because they want to be the first call you
make.

Targeted Strategy
Peter Palmiotto and Storm Tight Windows are a bit more strategic, and targeted, in their approach when
sending their team into a storm. They conduct some basic market research to try and make their team as
efficient as possible in the field.

Their approach focuses on trying to find the damaged neighborhoods with bigger houses. They also try
to gather a list of homeowners so that canvassers don’t waste time knocking doors and having conversa-
tions with consumers that aren’t qualified to take advantage of their services.

Most storm restoration companies have an opinion on whether or not it’s beneficial to concentrate on
homes that are larger in size. Sure, there’s always the possibility that it pays off, but is it worth the addi-
tional time and effort from a financial perspective?

Where Do You Stand?

The arguments against this technique are the unpredictability and the market you’re canvassing in.

For example, let’s say you’re working in my favorite city, Dallas (I cheated – I live here). A house with a
value of $300,000 in Dallas could actually be the same size as a $125,000 home in Wisconsin.

I guess I shouldn’t have been so quick to brag on ‘Big D’ just a minute ago.

The home market values are drastically different for two houses that are the exact same size. The night-
mare situation, and reason for so much debate about the strategy, is that the cost to reroof each home
could wind up being the same.

If this happens, you’ve reduced your profitability by investing time into a process that didn’t produce a re-
turn on that investment. Essentially, you worked for free instead of focusing on something that could have
been improved. What’s your opinion on this approach?

Home Value Or Size… One Thing Is Certain

It doesn’t matter whether you’re concerned with the value of the house or the size of it, one thing is
certain in every situation – There needs to be enough hail damage to get approved by their insurance
company.

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How To Qualify Prospects
If you’re going to do any type of market research prior to going out in a storm environment, you need to
know which information will result in production. In storm restoration, it’s very basic data.

• Are they the homeowner?

• Do they have insurance?
• Is there enough damage for insurance approval?

The answers to these 3 questions are pretty much the only qualifications that can improve your canvass-
ing efficiency. To make sure you don’t waste time like in the situation earlier, there’s tools to help you
streamline this process.

City-Data is a free online tool that serves as a great starting point.

They gather government data to offer city information valuable to storm restoration companies, like
weather patterns, buyers vs renters and if you are looking for home size, that’s included.

This will be a great first tool to start building a list.

Now – Laser Focus

Once you’ve built an initial list, dive in and verify that information. This
is one of the most effective ways to double your team’s selling time.
Your strategy here is to determine how many from that list are home-
owners. You’re going to completely eliminate your team from speak-
ing with renters.

The best part is it’s extremely easy to do with Lead Machine.

Draw an area where you want your team to work based on the loca-
tions from your list in City-Data. Once you have the size of the area
finalized, it’ll show the total number of homes. From here it couldn’t
be easier. Simply check the box titled ‘Homeowners Only’ and you’re
done.

SPOTIO will not only tell you the exact number of homeowners in the area you drew, but it’ll also put a
pin on the location of the home so you can see their location on a map. Additionally, you’ll get the home-
owner’s name, phone number, and email if it’s available. This will make your life so much easier in a new
storm, especially when there’s a lot of competition.

Just imagine watching your competitors knock every single door to find out what you already know:
They’re not qualified because they rent. You’ll set your team up for success by making them more effi-
cient and eliminating pointless conversations.

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4 Strategies To Working New Storms
#1 – Work The Most Severe Damage
The most heavily damaged areas of a
storm aren’t always together, but the
most damage means there’s plenty of
work to go around. If you’ve done your
market research, you’ll be set up per-
fectly to specifically target the houses
you want to send your sales team to.

Using the market demographics avail-

able to you allows you to focus on
higher quality leads that are more likely
to convert. It gives you a specific plan
of attack, preventing your team from
knocking doors aimlessly.

The most important thing to remember is you need to be tracking every attempt. Because you’re specifi-
cally focusing on a certain number of houses that match your criteria, your opportunities are more limited
than they would be if you were simply knocking on every door that had damage.

Having a targeted approach sets you up to convert leads into sales at a much more significant rate, but it
also places a greater value on each home because there aren’t as many to go around. Following up and
properly working the territory is mission critical to cashing in on every dollar available.

#2 – Work The Epicenter Of The Storm

Working at the heart of a storm that has just hit is always a popular strategy. With working at the center of
a new storm, comes tremendous amounts of competition.

The companies that typically have the most success with this strategy not only have a sales team with
vast amounts of experience, they also have sales reps that can back it up and convert at a high rate,

They are also generally more well-known companies with a lot of brand recognition. These types of
players have spent years building the reputation that consumers have come to expect. They generally
don’t have to worry about the competition
as much as smaller companies looking to
establish themselves.

Storm restoration companies looking to

send their team into the jungle like this need
sales reps who understand their competitive
advantage. If you’re going into a highly com-
petitive area, homeowners are usually going
to be approached by multiple salespeople in
a short period of time.

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Reps have to be able to articulate your competitive advantage in a language the consumer will
understand.

This goes well beyond the basic, “We’ll save you “X” amount of money more than what they will.” Your
advantage has to be something unique, but more importantly, it needs to be something of value to the
customer.

If the homeowner doesn’t see value in what separates your company from the rest, what’s the point?

#3 – Work The Outskirts Of The Storm

Some think working the outskirts of a storm as being afraid of competition, but that’s just ignorant. When
worked properly, damaged areas on the fringe of the storm can be extremely valuable to your company.

The outer areas of a storm are sometimes more profitable because

of how many sales organizations focus on the heart of the dam-
age. In Bull Durham (the greatest baseball movie of all time) Susan
Sarandon said, “Go get ‘em boys, hit ‘em where they ain’t.”

The quote may not ring a bell for many of you, but the point is work-
ing where others aren’t can be beneficial.

While there’s often less competition on the outside of the storm area, there are a few drawbacks to be
aware of. The most common challenge is canvassing a larger and more spread out area. The damaged
homes aren’t all clustered together like they are in the center of the storm.

A wider area to cover means sales reps will generally knock fewer doors. Less attempts places a greater
importance on being able to set the hook with an effective pitch at the door. Having fewer opportunities
requires your team to convert prospects to leads, and leads to sales, at a higher rate.

To generate the same number of deals that you would knocking more doors, your team has to be more
effective in their efforts. Canvassers and salespeople both need to be trained to entice a prospect with
“bate” based on their needs and desires.

Because your sales team will have fewer “at-bats” on the outskirts, measuring their performance becomes
significantly more important. The limited number of homes to visit means that once they’re gone, they’re
gone.

For more success, use your dashboard to measure the 3 must-know metrics of door to door sales, learn
the best time to knock doors to maximize contact rates, and completely exhaust the areas you choose to
work until you’ve reached a 75% contact rate at the absolute minimum.

#4 – Work Territories Around Current Customers

One of the most effective strategies to generate more leads and close more deals is to assign territories
near your current customers, and active installs. For this to work, you first need to determine where these
individuals are located geographically, and that there’s enough homes in the area with damage.

If there’s not enough opportunity to send your entire team into an area, don’t just throw in the towel on
this strategy all together. Referrals are the highest converting & cheapest leads.

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Loyal customers are extremely valuable resources. 83% of consumers who had a positive experience
actually say they’re willing to provide sales reps with referrals. Because they close at such a high rate, you
can’t ignore working storm damage near their location.

Even if they don’t provide referrals, they can still be used as references to break the ice during an
introduction.

Drew Klass is a member of the SVG commu-

nity who has incredible success canvassing
areas near current jobs. He outlined his
strategy for us.

Initiating the conversation is half the battle,

and being able to reference someone the
prospect may know gives you that spark.
Your current customers and active jobs rep-
resent a large amount of revenue for your
company – Don’t leave that money sitting on
the table.

Final Thoughts
Each of the 4 strategies outlined to help you determine where to work when a new storm hits have been
proven successful. Where you choose to go is dependent upon your organization’s goals and beliefs.

Some use the same approach at every storm, others switch it up based on their location. Depending
on the size of your sales team, you can even use a combination if you have the manpower to cover that
much ground.

You can reference the matrix we created that shows where you should work based on the experience
level of your team. Keep in mind this is a suggestion without knowing the size of your team or your orga-
nizational structure. A variety of factors will affect where you ultimately choose to work, but the matrix is a
good place to start if you need a little help.

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The Importance of Urgency
“If you ain’t first, you’re last”
– Ricky Bobby, Talladega Nights

The importance of being the first to respond after a storm hits

can’t be stressed enough. Getting on the doors before your
competitors provides your sales team with an absolutely cru-
cial advantage.

Too many storm restoration companies don’t take a proac-

tive approach to set their team up for success. Despite the
overwhelming evidence demonstrating the importance that
being first has in relation to success, getting out as early as
possible is still wildly undervalued.

Expert Advice
Regal’s approach to knocking doors in a new storm is exceptionally effective. They generate 99% of their
leads in a storm from canvassing efforts, which is almost unheard of in today’s sales culture.

2 Words For More Leads

We asked another leader in the industry what one piece of advice they’d give to a storm restoration
company trying to increase the number of leads generated through door knocking, and their response
summed it up perfectly.

“Be early.”
– Columbine Roofing

Their answer won’t revolutionize the industry or win an award for creativity, but it’s considerably easy to
accomplish. The simplicity in their response is something that literally any company can do. It requires
nothing more than preparation.

3 Proactive Strategies
The most successful organizations in the storm restoration industry are able to beat their competition in
the field because of what they do prior to it hitting. They do their heavy lifting well before sending their
team out to knock doors.

1. They actively track the storm’s path

2. They prep their team to be ready as soon as the storm is finished
3. They utilize radar detected storm impact alerts

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Tracking The Path in Real-Time
The best thing you can do to ensure your team is first in the
field is to have a live feed of the storm. With how quickly a
storm’s trajectory can change, you have to be able to adapt
at the last minute.

The information available in today’s technologically ad-

vanced society is generally super accurate, but even the
best can sometimes be caught off guard. If you’re tracking a
storm’s progress and somehow come out on the short end
of the draw, you can still send sales reps out to visit different
neighborhoods.

Guessing where your team should be working may not lead to the highest level of success, but it beats
having them sit around while you come up with a new plan of attack. There’s always homes with damage
they can visit, even if they’re more spread out than anticipated. Something is better than nothing, right?

Preparing Canvassers & Sales Reps

You can do all the prep work you want ahead of a storm, but if you don’t have anyone to sell, you’re in a
bit of a sticky situation.

If your team isn’t ready to knock doors with an exact plan, it will be much tougher to get such a high per-
centage of appointments in the field.

The entire organization should understand how critical being

first is to their success.

Being late to the party will reduce the number of opportunities

available because another company may already be there.
Competitors that beat you to the storm leave fewer potential
leads to be split among more canvassers working the same
area.

More importantly, not being first means the more qualified pros-
pects with a genuine need are often off the market. The one
thing you want to avoid is missing out on high-value targets.

Radar Detected Storm Updates

The swath maps available have become significantly more accurate, and the technology is constantly
getting better. Interactive Hail Maps, for instance, provides live updates through mobile alerts.

There are also free ones that you can get through Weather.gov although they may be more generic than
just hail.

If you’re ready to get your team in the field, don’t hesitate. You can always adjust where they’re knocking
doors the following day, but you don’t want to lose out on the day when the most opportunities are up for
grabs.

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 Real-time alerts are sent directly to your mobile device based on
forensic radar detection and public reports made available by the
NOAA. The update sent to your phone will provide your distance
from the storm’s location.

It’s always a great idea to confirm the storm path that the swath
shows by going to the area and looking for signs of damage like tree
shredding and metal damage on gutters and roof vents.

Don’t Ignore The Importance

Of Being First
Undervaluing the advantage you gain by getting out in the field be-
fore your competitors is a huge mistake. The reason the best compa-
nies are the best, is because they take every opportunity to improve
their processes.

When the most successful storm restoration companies are handing

you a page out of their playbook, jump on it. Being first to respond
when a storm hits gives your team more “at-bats” with less compe-
tition. The more conversations they have before the fleet arrives,
the better their chances of generating more leads. Recognize how
important urgency is in a new storm.

Working Your Numbers

Advanced analytics are changing the game for door to door sales organizations. They’re giving compa-
nies accurate and reliable data that can be used to set achievable sales targets.

Goals = Best Method Of Accountability

Attainable quotas entice the true sales professionals and have them licking their chops, regardless of
the industry. When salespeople believe they can hit a number, they work hard because they can actually
make some serious coin for a change.

It’s not easy to come up with a number that makes you more money while keeping salespeople engaged
and motivated. Initially, it’s a little time consuming to review the required metrics from previous months,
but the uptick in production will significantly payoff.

Take the time as an owner, or a leadership team, to set SMART sales targets that will promote the highest
level of performance. Once you’ve done this, get the entire sales department together at the start of the
month and have each person create their own.

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Accountability Produces Results
We’ve made it easy for you to do this as a team by creating sales goals templates. Writing goals forces
salespeople to hold themselves accountable and allows you to crack the whip if needed.

• Download: Sales Goal Template for Sales Reps

• Download: Sales Goal Template for Canvassers / Lead Generators

There’s plenty of examples of SMART sales goals if your team needs an inspirational spark. The most
important thing to remember is they need to be actionable and measurable.

Measuring your team’s progress toward these goals is extremely easy, and your metrics are automatically
calculated on the dashboard.

Barney Stinson Style

Working your numbers in a new storm is essential to your success.
Challenge your sales department by setting a realistic revenue target
for each storm to see if they’ll take advantage of it. Improved accuracy
allows you to determine exactly what you need to do in order to hit
these numbers.

You’ll have the ability to track everything from number of doors that
need to be knocked each day, to the number of salespeople needed
on your team.

Before You Start Selling

The only way you’ll be able to throw down the gauntlet
and know if it was effective is if you stop being lazy
and track every attempt. Before anyone gets overzeal-
ous and starts knocking doors, you have to determine
exactly what’s required to reach your target. This isn’t
your goal, but the activities required to hit that goal.

If you set a revenue target of $1 million, but only av-

erage $100 per deal with a team of just 5 sales reps…
well, you’re screwed. This is why you need to under-
stand the 3 must-know metrics of door to door sales.

However, with a team of 1,000 sales reps working toward that number, you might have a shot… maybe.

The point is you need to understand every component of achieving your goal.

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What You Need to Track
It’s important to get a full view of your prospecting and sales funnel so you can make real time corrections
to activities, locations and sales processes.

At the minimum here are the metrics you need to be tracking:

Each of these metrics represent a different part of the sales process that lead up to Revenue. If you only
track your Sales then you have no actionable way to get there.

However if you track every step of the process you can effectively know how many Attempts you need to
make each day to get to the end result, a SALE.

For more information on these metrics check out this blog post.

Let’s Work the Numbers

We built an entire process showing how to work your numbers in a new storm based on prior success.
You can enter your company’s actual data into the calculations below – we just created the numbers for
this example.

New Storm Revenue Goal = $1,000,000

If you’re trying to generate $1,000,000 in this storm, you first need to calculate your average deal size
and enter that number in the field on your SPOTIO dashboard. Once you know this number, the rest be-
comes basic math.

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Number Of Sales Needed
Revenue Target = $1,000,000 | Average Deal Size = $10,000
# of Sales = Revenue Target / Average Deal Size
# of Sales = $1,000,000 / $10,000
# of Sales = 100

An average deal size of $10,000 means your team will need to close a total of 100 deals. Now that you
know how many sales you’ll need to reach your goal, you have to determine how many sales reps you’ll
need on staff.

Number Of Sales Reps

Revenue Target = $1,000,000 | # of Sales = 100 | Average # of Sales per Rep = 20
# of Sales Reps = # of Sales / Average # of Sales per Rep
# of Sales Reps = 100 / 20
# of Sales Reps = 5

To determine how many salespeople will be

required to convert 100 opportunities, use your
dashboard to access the average number of
deals won by each rep. To make numbers easy,
we’re assuming we have one month to reach
our goal.

10 sales reps on staff isn’t too shabby. Of course

they don’t have a close rate of 100%, unfortu-
nately, so you need to find out how many leads
need to be generated in order to win the hearts
of 100 customers.

Number Of Leads Needed

To shorten this example, we’ll assume that sales reps are setting their own appointments. This saves our
pretend company a pretty penny by not having to hire canvassers. Determining the number of opportuni-
ties needed for reps to close a total of 100 deals is based on your team’s average closing percentage. To
make it easy, our team converts leads at a rate of 40%.

Revenue Target = $1,000,000 | # of Sales = 100 | Average Closing % = 40%

# of Leads = # of Sales / Average Closing %
# of Leads = 100 / 40%
# of Leads = 250

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Number of Qualified Prospects Needed
When we’re talking about Qualified Prospects we aren’t referring to homeowners that have had an insur-
ance approved roof or anything more than they are the homeowner, have insurance and have damage.
That’s a qualified prospect. We want to talk to as many of them as possible.

Now, how many Qualified Prospects do you need to talk to in order to get a Lead? You’re going to need
250 leads to hit your Sales goal.

How good is your team at converting a Qualified Prospect into a Lead? This takes skill, training and a pro-
cess so make sure you have that lined out.

We’ll assume you can convert 1 out of 3 Qualified Prospects to a Lead. This is called your “Lead Rate.”

Revenue Target = $1,000,000 | # of Leads = 250 | Lead Rate = 33%

# of Qualified Prospects Needed = # of Leads / % of Qualified to Lead
# of Conversations = 250 / 33%
# of Qualified Prospects = 757

Number Of Contacts Needed

So you’re trying to get in front of as many Qualified Prospects as you can to convert them over to Leads.

The higher your Qualified Prospect rate the better the area or territory you are working. At a fresh storm
the amount of Qualified Prospects you run into should be very high of course depending on where in the
storm you are working.

If you’re going to go out and beat the streets you might as well go to areas that have a high concentration
of damage and thus a higher concentration of Qualified Prospects.

But how many Contacts do you need to get in front of a Qualified Prospect? We’re going to assume that
85% of the homeowners in the territory you are working are Qualified so to get the amount of Contacts
you need to make we’ll divide that number by the Qualified Rate.

Revenue Target = $1,000,000 | # of Qualified Prospects = 757 | Qualified Rate =

85%
# of Contacts = # of Qualified Prospects / Qualified Rate
# of Contacts = 757 / 85%
# of Contacts = 891

Knowing our team has had over 891 people at least answer the door, I’m going to jump ahead a little bit to
show the total number of attempts needed to reach our goal of $1,000,000 and 100 sales.

Number Of Attempts Needed

The number of attempts our team will need to make is largely dependent on our contact rate. Knowing
the best time to canvass to maximize contact rates is an extremely simple adjustment to make that will
have a significant impact on your profitability.

The average is generally between 25% – 35%. If you’re not achieving this rate, you should look at switch-
ing the times your team is canvassing.

20
To demonstrate the importance of getting in front of homeowners, we used two examples with contact
rates that are pretty average.

# of Conversations = 891 | Contact Rate #1= 25% | Contact Rate #2= 35%
# of Attempts = # of Answers / Contact Rate

Example #1 Example #2
# of Attempts = 891 / 25% # of Attempts = 891 / 35%
# of Attempts = 3,565 # of Attempts = 2,545
By simply looking at my dashboard, I noticed my team’s contact rate was 10% higher during certain times.
The result is sales reps knocking 1,000 less doors.

I also just saved some serious coin and improved my profitability since sales reps didn’t work as many
hours in the field. I’m happy, and my team is happy. It’s a win-win.

‘Summing’ It Up
Did I mention this data is automatically calculated for you…?

Using the data and analytics available to us, we’ve been able to determine the sales activities that need
to be completed to achieve our revenue target and maximize profitability.

To accomplish our revenue goal of $1,000,000 - Check out the final results:

• 5 Total Sales Reps • 757 Qualified Prospects

• 100 Total Sales • 891 Total Conversations or Contacts
• 250 Total Leads • 2,545 – 3,565 Total Attempts

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The Danger In Attempts
In a storm environment, many companies put a lot of
emphasis on the number of attempts their team makes
per day. They also incentivize this metric as well. You
can provide a small incentive to drive production, but
you can’t pay out on this metric alone.

The risk with this strategy is that many on your team will probably go out and just knock doors without fo-
cusing on converting them into deals. They’re so focused on just hitting doors that they downplay getting
leads and sales.

We see this quite often with our existing customers, and it’s no different than an inside sales organization.
The initial focus needs to be on the number of doors they knock once they get in a new area, but it needs
to quickly shift to quality conversations.

When you shift your focus to quality conversations, you know that having enough of those will get you
to the number of deals you need. At the end of the day, it may take 33% fewer attempts to get the sales
volume needed depending on all the other factors in your funnel.

Knock the number of doors needed to have the number of quality conversations that will lead to results.

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 section three
Dispatching Your Team
Territory Management
Creating and assigning territories in a storm area is a considerably different process than how it’s normally
handled. Everything from size, to strategy, changes in a storm because there’s only so many homes that
have a need for your services.

Putting On A Full Court Press

Building territories in a storm requires a much more
strategic approach. It’s almost like a blitz due to the fierce
level of competition and limited number of leads to go
around.

The truth about territory management is that you usually

want to work to a 75% market penetration rate. Because
the affected areas are typically smaller, and only able to
be worked for a certain amount of time, you should focus
on achieving a higher contact rate than normal.

Drew couldn’t have said it better.

Timing Is Everything
One consideration to add on top of Drew’s approach is that the greatest sense of urgency for customers
to make a purchasing decision is quickly after the storm hits. This is often when they feel the greatest
need, and strongest urge, to pull the trigger.

Once you’ve assigned territories following a storm, have a fast & furious approach that shoots for a 90%
contact rate. This helps generate the maximum number of opportunities possible when the need is felt
the most. Consumers feel the most excitement during the time of your pitch.

The more time that passes, the greater the chance of life getting in the way, decreasing the likelihood of
them becoming a customer. Like Drew said, you can always go back if you don’t get them the first time,
but you can’t give up.

Size Matters
Don’t let anyone fool you, size does matter… in territory management, that is. Size is generally referring to
the number of homes included in that territory. Storm restoration has a unique sales process compared to
other door to door industries due to the amount of competition and rapid pace.

The most important reason the size of a territory matters so much is because of the number of times each
door is knocked in such a short period of time. This is different than any other field sales industry.

Storm restoration is extremely aggressive because of the limited areas that can be worked. The same
doors are often knocked multiples times in the same day if they don’t answer. Most companies in the in-
dustry place a significant importance on thoroughly working the area assigned to each canvasser or sales
rep.

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Limit The Number Of Homes Per Territory
Because of how important it is to completely exhaust every opportunity to get in front of the homeowner,
you have to limit the number of homes in a territory. If you give your salespeople too many doors to knock
in a single territory, one of two things will happen:

#1 – Fewer attempts will be made at each door

#2 – It will take a significantly greater amount of time to canvass the area
In either scenario, the likelihood of having the level of success is reduced. If fewer attempts are made on
every home, you’re leaving potential opportunities, and revenue, on the table.

If it takes your team longer to canvass the area, there’s a strong possibility your competition beat you to
the punch and stole a few deals from you.

Ideal Territory Size In A New Storm

The most effective canvassing schedule in a new storm has each salesperson on your team knocking
every door in their territory a minimum of 3 times during specific time blocks.

Realistically think about how many homes a canvasser or sales rep can visit in a single day. if they just
make the minimum number of required attempts:

• An ideal territory with 250 homes will take 8 days to reach a 75% saturation rate
• Your contact rate is 25%
• You knock 100 doors per day
• You make 5 passes through the territory
• You have a total of 195 conversations at the door

You don’t want to overload them with a ridiculously large territory that they’ll never be able fully saturate
the area. Too large of a territory leaves opportunities untouched and business on the table.

Ideal Territory Size = 150 – 250 homes to start

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Check This Out!
We created a free Territory Size &
Contact Rate Calculator for you to
download

Use the Calculator to Determine

• How many days it will take to reach

your desired market penetration
• How long you should be working
the territory for
• The # of missed opportunities
you’re leaving on the table
• The total # of contacts made
• The total # of houses in the territory
• The % of your territory remaining
to work after each pass through

Factors Influencing Territory Size

We could go down a rabbit hole on why more houses should or should not be given to each salesperson.
Some of the most common influences that may force you to tweak this range:

• Number of salespeople in your company

• Amount of damage from the storm
• How widespread the damage is
• Number of attempts you want your sales team to make at each home
• Organizational structure: canvassers + sales reps / sales reps only

Most Effective Territory Management Strategy

When possible, since it’s often dependent on the storm itself, focus as much of your canvassing efforts
in a concentrated area. Keeping your team in a tight area establishes your company’s presence in that
neighborhood. Homeowners notice when 10 people wearing bright blue shirts are continuously walking
up and down the street.

This lays a little bit of the groundwork for your team. Focusing your efforts on a concentrated area helps
build rapport much quicker because you’ll see the same people every day. You can then turn around and
use the relationships you’ve developed with a few of the homeowners as references in your introduction.

Getting to your first 100 sales in a storm becomes much easier when people in the neighborhood know
and trust your company. Just getting a couple sales that allow your company to have active jobs in the
area will be extremely valuable as well.

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Condensed Areas = Better For Canvassers &
Sales Reps
Let’s not forget about the added benefits working tighter areas has on sales reps… we wouldn’t want
them to start whining, would we… ; - )

Joking aside, focusing on smaller, more compact areas provide a lot of forgotten benefits.

Anything that saves your team time is a bonus. Subtle things like reducing the walking distance between
doors not only keeps them from getting tired, but it also improves their efficiency. Being able to knock
more doors in a shorter period of time is underrated for increasing productivity.

Another undervalued aspect of your team working closer to one another is the energy and competition it
creates between them.

One thing we hear quite a bit is how much salespeople like to go out together. It may not always be possi-
ble, but take advantage of it when it is.

How, when and the number of attempts you make at each home in a new storm differs drastically from
how neighborhoods are traditionally canvassed. Similar to how territory management changes so much,
and how much more important it becomes following a storm, your team’s knocking schedule does the
same.

Being able to get your first 100 sales in a new storm is significantly affected by the strategy you implement
to attack the area. The stiff amount of competition in the damaged areas means your team has to be more
aggressive. Most storm restoration companies pump up the number of touches they put on each home.

You Heard Matthew McConaughey – Pump Up

Those Numbers
Working in a new storm isn’t ‘business as usual.’ There’s
an unusually high number of salespeople competing to
win the same business. Some homeowners know this,
others don’t.

You can’t sit back and passively wait for deals to come
through, just ask the team over at Columbine Roofing.
They use a combination of canvassers and sales reps in
a storm, and require them to generate a minimum of 4
new leads per day.

For each salesperson in their organization to be able meet the minimum of 20 new opportunities per
week, they simply can’t visit a home once and not go back. They’re forced to knock the same doors multi-
ple times each day.

It’s actually an extremely well-thought strategy because it eliminates the salespeople who want to make
one pass through a neighborhood and just move on.

27
Many Have Followed This Lead
Almost every other storm restoration company we’ve spoken with shared a similar process in many re-
gards. While few have the aggressive sales targets that Columbine does, they’re not far off.

Peter Palmiotto with Storm Tight Windows, and Nickaletta Muscatello from Simon Bros Roofing &
Restoration, each set a goal of 2 new leads per day for their teams.

Knocking Schedule
The Importance Of A Schedule
The only way to reach the lofty targets these companies are setting is to have an effective knocking
schedule that’s designed for maximum efficiency. You have to empower your sales team to achieve a
peak level of productivity.

This schedule not only gives your sales team a structured process, it also ensures homes aren’t being left
untouched.

It’s As Easy As 1, 2, 3
Getting to 100 deals in a new storm is no easy feat. It requires a lot of well thought out strategies that
make the next thing more efficient than the one before. Having a repeatable schedule for your sales team
to knock doors gives them one less thing they need to worry about.

1. Each rep will knock every door in their territory a minimum of 3 times
2. Determine the 3 time periods your team has the highest contact rate
3. Rotate starting points so the same doors aren’t knocked at the same time each day

Making sure each territory has been completely saturated before leaving is essential to getting the high-
est level of production possible. Each rep will make at least 3 attempts but it will usually take at least 4
– 5. A homeowner’s greatest need is immediately after they realize there’s damage to their house. Their
desire to fix the issue decreases as time passes, placing a greater emphasis on an aggressive knocking
schedule.

28
 Create An Easy Schedule
New storms are fast-paced, high energy environments.
Knowing when and where to knock doors eliminates at
least one headache for salespeople. It gets rid of the
guessing game they’re used to experiencing and provide
a repeatable schedule going forward.

Break the territory up into smaller sections. Because

we’re setting the goal of knocking each door 3 times,
we’d break it up into thirds. It doesn’t matter how the sec-
tions are numbered because they’re going to be rotated.

The territory section number represents where you’re going to start at when you first get out in the field.
With how busy everyone seems to be today, you never know what their schedule could be or when they
could be home.

The goal is to make sure each home is visited at 3 different times of the day.

Appointments & Inspections

Why You Rotate In A Territory
Once you’ve set your schedule, make sure your team is starting in a different area within their territory
each time they go out. If they start at the same place and walk the exact same route each time they go
out, then they’re just knocking every door at the same time each day.

The goal is to make attempts at completely different times because everyone’s schedule is different. One
homeowner may be completely boring and have a 9 – 5 sales job where your likelihood catching them
during peak hours is very high.

On the other hand, many medical professionals in the ER work 12-hour shifts that generally run from 7 – 7.
These people pretty much have two options.

Some are finishing their day at 7:00 a.m., and trying to squeeze in a power nap before having to take the
kids to school. The other half of them are being bums and sleeping through the sunny day you enjoy.
Okay… they’re not actually being lazy, they’re getting ready to work through the night while everyone else
sleeps.

The point of that ever entertaining example is everyone has a schedule of their own. No matter how odd
it may be, there’s only 24 hours in a day and they have to be home at some point. Even if they’re home,
sometimes the hardest part is just catching people at a time when life isn’t crazy.

Appointments are essential to getting your first 100 deals in a new storm market. They’re even more im-
portant to continue dominating that market. Sales associates want everything to happen now. They want
that next lead, or that next sale, to happen on their time. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work like that,
much to their surprise.

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Go Ahead & Do The Inspection
Just because it doesn’t always work out how they want it to, doesn’t mean it won’t happen on occasion. If
a sales rep gets the opportunity to do an inspection, go for it!

There’s no time like the present and with the amount of competition, you don’t want someone else to
swoop in. You want to make a strong push to get the appointment at the door.

While you want to do everything possible to do the inspection when you’re in front of them, setting a
follow up appointment is considerably better than not working a potential customer simply because the
sales rep doesn’t know the value of following up.

There was a great discussion on the Storm Ventures Group Facebook community on this topic and it lit
the comment section on fire!

The consensus was to do the inspection on the spot but always liking to use Data for these conversations
here’s why the Appointment Show Rate is so dang important.

Appointment Show Rate = Appointments Set / Appointments Showed

We’re calling an Appointment Show as the homeowner answered the door and was expecting to meet
your for your appointment hopefully with their significant other.

When you do your inspection right after setting the appointment your show rate will be SKY HIGH be-
cause you are not allowing time to be a main factor.

When you set an appointment for a later time all sorts of things can happen:

• Competition sneaks in
• They have second thoughts
• You forget or move onto another prospect

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Any chance you get to increase your show rate you need to take advantage of it.

In the below example you can see that when running appointments in real time with a 95% show rate

YOU CAN DOUBLE YOUR SALES

Factors Influencing Success

In order to be effective on-the-spot, there’s certain techniques and strategies that salespeople can utilize
to their benefit.

The first is understanding the 5 body language mistakes that may cost them the sale (or appointment).
The worst thing they can do is shoot themselves in the foot before they’ve even had an opportunity to win
the business.

In addition to their body language, a few factors that affect success are:

• How they talk

• How they look
• How they smell
• How they dress
• What they say (sales pitch)
• How they say it (tone, emphasis, speed, etc.)
• The visuals / documents / company creden-
tials shown at the door

31
What Anthony’s saying is sales associates need to “control their controllables.” For example, door to
door sales reps need to be aware that 93% of a potential customer’s judgment of them will be based on
non-verbal inputs, while just 7% will be a result of what they actually say.

A potential customer’s judgment of a canvasser or sales rep includes their personal appearance.
Understanding the wide variety of factors that will influence a homeowner allows your team to use certain
things to their advantage. For example, they can use how they dress to draw consumers to the service
they’re selling.

What they say is still extremely important. Sales reps need to be able to engage the homeowner to pique
their interest, establish credibility and build trust, like these sales pitch examples do.

The Decision Tree

When it comes to the pitch, the best thing you can do to improve your sales team’s performance is create
a script for them that has proven results. This doesn’t mean it has to be used word for word or they’ll fail,
but they need to know the direction of the conversation regardless of what’s said, or which objection is
thrown out.

Shawn Meredith is the Owner & CEO of Hire A Canvasser, and created the ‘decision tree’ to solve this
issue. It’s not like a memorized sales script, but a guide to follow for direction for each step sales process.

The questions will always be the same, but the consumer’s response will determine the next question
asked. Using this process, you’ll be able to steer the prospect’s answers toward the desired outcome.

More Deals Comes Down To This

In an interview with Adam Bensman from Referral Storm, he said:

Adam told us the resounding response from prospects was:

“I’m interested; I wanted to move forward but no one ever followed up

with me.”
Bensman developed a specific strategy when he was selling, and it’s how he sold 40% of his business. It
starts with making the right number of follow up attempts.

“If we knock a door 3 times and they’re not home, chances are we’re
going to get them on that 4th try, as long as we use a different day.
Our customers are killing it doing that method. It’s no different for
salespeople following up four or five times with a phone call.”

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3 Reasons Sales Reps Don’t Follow Up
1. They Get Lazy
2. They Get Busy
3. They Aren’t Organized Enough

“We’ll Call You If We’re Interested…”

How many times have sales reps heard this from a potential customer? “Why don’t you leave your infor-
mation with me, I’ll review it with my husband, and if we’re interested we’ll call you.”

At least a million, right? How you handle this is going to be the difference that separates you from the
competition once and for all.

Most salespeople will typically hand over their card and ask the homeowner when they can follow up
with them. Like it’s happened time and time again, the homeowner will get out of it by telling you they’ll
call you, and the canvasser or sales rep will just leave it at that. They’ll go back to the office like, “Damn, I
almost got that one; they’re going to call me…” Sorry, not gonna happen.

33
‘Forget That Noise’ With This Proven
Technique
Your new response to this time-old question:

“Sure Mr. Homeowner, here’s my card. Do you have any objection if I take
your name and number to give you a friendly follow up call in a few days?
Look, this sounds super basic and you’re probably wondering how in the hell something this simple could
be so effective. There’s more to it than just remembering this line.

This is the one thing within your script or decision tree that must be used verbatim. The bold and under-
lined text is especially important with this technique. We’ll breakdown this statement to show why it’s so
effective, and more importantly the significance of “objection” and “friendly follow up.”

Step #1 | Leveraging The Power Of ‘No’

The first component of this technique is a sales psychology. When we say, “Do you have any objection?”
– We’re using a psychological tool to get a negative agreement. People are conditioned to say no, it’s
their typical response, especially when it comes to salespeople standing at their door.

If we were to change the question to: “Hey Mr. Homeowner, we just met, but can you give me your num-
ber?” – We’d probably get turned down and told to get the hell out of here.

By leveraging the instinct to say no, you’re leveraging a negative agreement to get the result you want.

Step #2 | Gain Full Control

The outcome you want is their name and number in your hand so you can try and set a firm appointment.
Remember how important body language and non-verbal communication are? This is where it’s going to
be critical to the success of this technique.

We’re going to use body language to get full control of the conversation. As the sales rep finishes asking
the question, they’re going to pull out pen & paper, and stand shoulder to shoulder. The reason for stand-
ing shoulder to shoulder is to allow the homeowner to see your paper.

The key is to be assumptive. The second they finish asking the question, they should assume the home-
owner is going to give them the information they want with their body language. It’s going to make them a
little uncomfortable. If they weren’t wanting to give their information, they’re going to anyways.

Step #3 | The Psychological Seed

The third reason this works is because of the psychological effect it has. When you’re able to take control
of the conversation, you’re setting the expectation for the homeowner by hinting that you’re going to call
in a few days.

The key here is the word “friendly” when we ask for a follow up call. Most sales professionals call to follow
up with a prospect by saying something like, “Hey, did you talk to your wife yet? Are you ready to buy?”

34
 section four
Pulse Check
This traditionally doesn’t go over too well. It doesn’t help further develop the relationship and it comes off
insincere. If you want to set more appointments, you have to establish trust with your customers and give
them a positive experience at every stage of the sales process. This includes the follow up call itself.

Recapturing Control From Rejection

Using this technique allows your team to set a follow up out of what started as them being rejected. In
addition, you have a few valuable assets – You’ve now set a firm day & time to follow up, you’ve set the
proper expectations, you’ve developed a relationship and established credibility, and ultimately recap-
tured complete control.

The following is an example of the conversation from start to finish:

Homeowner: How about you leave your information with me, and I’ll review it with my husband. If we’re
interested we’ll definitely give you a call.

Sales Rep: Sure Mr. Homeowner, here’s my card. Do you have any objection if I take your name and
number to give you a friendly follow up call in a few days? [Stand shoulder to shoulder so
they can see your pen & paper]

Homeowner: Okay… sure.

Sales Rep: You know, I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name. I’m Adam.

Homeowner: Oh, it’s Trey.

Sales Rep: Trey, great to meet you. So Trey, the best phone number to reach you is?

Homeowner: XXX-XXX-XXXX

Sales Rep: Perfect thanks. I’ve got it written down. Look Trey, I know you’re busy. When’s the best
time to give you a shout about that friendly follow up so I don’t catch you in the middle of
dinner or something?

Homeowner: Wednesdays are normally good.

Sales Rep: Awesome, and what time Wednesday? 4:00? Great.

Final Takeaway
The #1 complaint Adam says he hears about contractors across the board, is that they don’t communicate.
Contractors in general don’t follow up, return phone calls, deliver estimates or show up on time.

“If salespeople can effectively follow up, they will inherently win more business without even having to try,
simply because they were the only one who showed up, or showed up on time.”

If you want to consistently generate more appointments, it comes down to sales reps completing tasks
that are listed in their job responsibilities.

36
Using Metrics
There’s an absolutely alarming amount of metrics available for door
to door sales managers to measure their team’s success. With how
competitive new storm environments are, especially in major mar-
kets, evaluating performance levels is critical to making sure you’re
on track to reach your sales targets.

With the wealth of data available for managers to analyze, the need
to know which metrics are most valuable to your organization has
never been more important.

How Do You Know?

Which metrics need to be reviewed most often will largely depend on the goals set by the company, and
the individual sales rep. SMART sales goals are actionable, meaning there are activities to complete in
order to achieve the end result.

This is the first place to look to determine which metrics are the most important. Quite a few of the most
well-known metrics fall into this category. There’s a reason they’re so popular, right?

It’s the data points you look at after these that start to muddy the waters. Some numbers tell a story, but
not the whole story. Others are sometimes misleading, especially if they’re not as well understood.

For example, most people are familiar with the 3 must-know sales metrics of the door to door sales indus-
try, and the importance of maximizing their contact rate.

Few sales professionals are familiar with the 4th must-know sales metric because it’s a little more ad-
vanced. They don’t take the time to learn more about why they’re succeeding or failing.

Painting An Overview vs Telling A Story

Here’s a very easy way to classify sales metrics:

The most important sales metrics provide a high-level overview of activi-

ties and performance
Metrics like the number of leads, sales and total revenue generated fall into this group. These numbers
are great to determine whether you’re meeting the overall goal or coming up short.

Advanced metrics tell a story by providing the insights needed to deter-

mine why you’re experiencing the results you are
The 4th must-know door to door sales metric is called your “Qualified Rate,” and goes more in-depth than
just the number of leads generated.

If your team isn’t generating as many leads as they did last month, but having the same number of

37
conversations, this could be why. This percentage shows how many prospects are qualified to make a
purchase based on the number of contacts you made.

Month 1: You make 100 total contacts and only 20 are renters
Qualified Rate = 80%

Month 2: You make 100 total contacts but 50 are renters

Qualified Rate = 50%

When your team generates fewer leads in the 2nd month, you’re able to see it’s because they had fewer
quality conversations, and assign them to a better territory with more opportunity.

Use Results To Make

Adjustments To:
• Canvassing Times
• Territory Locations
• Sales Pitch
• Sales Tools
• Training Focus
• Territory Size
• Automate Workflows
• Closing Techniques

Measuring your results gives you the information

needed to make changes in areas that are lacking. It
starts with empowering your team to log their activi-
ties efficiently while not slowing them down.

Are you giving your sales team the tools they need to succeed? The answer for most companies is no
because they don’t know what they are. The tools they use play a critical role in a large portion of the
metrics gathered. Equipping canvassers and sales reps with the right tools improves their efficiency.

As an example, you can measure the increase in the number of doors they’re able to hit when they use a
canvassing software instead of lead sheets. You can also see the rep on your team with the highest clos-
ing percentage and learn from their techniques.

Are they doing something groundbreaking or do they just understand the finer nuances of closing, like
how tone helps close more deals?

The Metrics That Matter In Storm Restoration

Any information you can gather to be better as a company is great. Working in a storm environment is
much different than canvassing as a solar company. Everything from how an area is canvassed, to the
conversion rates you can expect will vary from industry to industry.

38
There’s a few pieces of information that have a significant impact in a storm environment and tell a lot of
the story.

• Qualified Rate
• Lead Rate
• Contact Rate
• Leads per Day
• Contacts per Day
• Sales per Day

Qualified Rate
The 4th must-know metric is especially important in the storm restoration industry because only home-
owners are qualified to make a purchase.

Qualified Rate = # of Qualified Prospects / # of Contacts

If your team follows the knocking schedule outlined earlier and they’re not setting as many appointments,
this is one of the first places you want to look. Check to make sure they’re speaking with homeowners
and not labeling a large amount of houses as renters.

Lead Rate
A canvasser’s lead rate is similar to a sales rep’s closing percentage. There’s a big misconception that be-
cause canvassers don’t close the deal, they don’t sell – wrong. Canvassers sell the appointment. To have
a high lead rate they need to lockdown, or “close” the appointment.

Lead Rate = # of Contacts / # of Leads

If a canvasser has a high number of conversations at the door but doesn’t convert those opportunities to
leads, this tells you where they need to be coached. They’re having a lot of conversations, which tells you
their introduction and pitch are good, but they struggle locking down the appointment. Assuming your
qualified rate is good, this is typically a training issue.

Contact Rate
Again, this is a well-know metric, but an important one for a reason that many often don’t use it for. Most
usually use contact rate simply to measure how many conversations a salesperson has.

Contact Rate = # of Answers / # of Attempts

It’s all about how you interpret the information you have available. If your team has a low contact rate,
you’re likely not generating leads. This could be a sign that the territory is bad and it’s time to move. Use
the insights at your disposal to determine whether or not it’s worth taking the risk of staying there.

39
Leads Per Day
This is one the metrics that’s specifically important to storm Restoration. Most companies set a goal for
how many leads a canvasser or sales rep gets each day.

Leads per Day = # of Leads / # of Days

If some of your team routinely falling short, there’s a variety of possibilities why this is happening. If they’re
doing what’s asked of them in terms of their activity level, this is almost always because of 2 things.

The first is a lack of proper training from sales leaders. Too many companies fail to effectively train
Salespeople from the start, then have no ongoing coaching for their development.

The second is an owner or manager not fully understanding their team or the market. Somewhere along
the way they set unrealistic sales goals based on what they thought instead of past data.

Contacts Per Day

The number of contacts a sales rep has per day is another metric that almost every storm restoration
company sets as a target.

Contacts per Day = # of Contacts / # of Days

You should set the number of contacts needed per day based on their con-
tact rate. That will tell you how many total attempts they typically need to
make. These need to be quality conversations. Don’t count renters as con-
tacts because it’s just going to skew your numbers.

Daily Expectations
With how competitive it is in a new storm, daily activity metrics are often aggressive. This means that the
goals being set are probably high. One of the most common goals is the number of new leads expected
to be generated each day. Regardless of the expectations being set, they need to be data-driven.

# of Doors Knocked
Shawn Meredith says canvassers should be knocking 100 doors per day. Shawn believes there should be
more focus on their contact rate because making attempts doesn’t guarantee people will answer.

If a canvasser reaches the century mark in

knocks but only talks to 5 homeowners, they
have to convert at an unreasonably high rate
that likely won’t happen. Because this isn’t
sustainable, he places a greater emphasis on
making sure his team is having enough conver-
sations to reach their goal.

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 # of Leads
Almost every storm restoration company has a leads goal that their team is expected to achieve.

On average, canvassers should be getting 3 – 4 new leads per day. There’s room for this target to be ad-
justed, but the majority of companies have a minimum expectation of 2 per day. On the most aggressive
end, some companies want 5 new leads per day. Shawn said that in addition to the metrics they track,
“the biggest factor affecting how many leads a canvasser should produce is the market you’re working
in.”

Pulse Check
The goal of using metrics is to see if you’re on track to hit the assumptions you made prior to your team
working in the field. There’s a wealth of information now available to measure if you’re getting the produc-
tivity you expected from your canvassing program.

The targets you set going into the storm should be based on data-driven metrics. Are you producing the
number of leads needed for sales reps? If so, are they closing deals at a rate high enough to meet your
revenue target?

The Best in the Business

We asked every storm restoration company one question that was the exact same:

What’s the BEST piece of advice you’d give to companies trying to gener-
ate more door to door leads in a new storm?
Every single person we asked this question to said the exact same thing:

EFFECTIVE TRAINING

There’s not enough space on this page to emphasize the need for companies to provide better, and more
effective, training for their sales team.

From some of the biggest and most well-known names in storm restoration, to companies we had never
met, each person mentioned the lack of training being given to salespeople.

Anthony Delmedico is the CEO of Storm Ventures Group and producer of the Win the Storm Conference.

He works with other contractors to help scale their business, deal with property damage, handle complex
insurance claims, and train their sales team. In 2014, Delmedico authored and published “Win The Game,”
which was voted the #1 book for contractors in the insurance restoration industry.

He gets asked questions like this all the time and had a lot to say on the subject. The key takeaway is that
MOST, not some, sales associates are undertrained. This leads to numerous inspections, leads, and deals
being lost.

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Understanding The Goal
Most of the door to door companies we speak with tell us their goal is generate more opportunities and
close more sales to increase revenue. It’s simple – they want to make more money. That’s completely
understandable.

So, how do you do it?

“It’s not really about having a ‘pitch,’ it’s about having knowledge and
being able to educate the homeowner in a way that makes sense for
them to understand. The biggest mistake affecting storm restoration
companies is not properly training and educating canvassers”
Shawn Meredith | Owner & CEO, Hire A Canvasser

‘Ask The Pros’

The majority of these companies want to know what they can do to achieve better results.

Anthony Delmedico says generating more leads comes down to one

thing: effective training.

Grant Cardone agrees and delivered the same message as the key-
note speaker of the 2017 Win the Storm Conference.

He also discussed the subject with Delmedico on an episode of ‘Ask

The Pros’. His final words… Better training = Maximum production

Following The Same Vicious Cycle

The companies looking for advice are told exactly where to place their focus to generate more leads. The
most qualified people in the industry give the same message, yet nothing changes.

These are the companies who refuse to provide any resemblance of an ongoing training program and
hire independent contractors so they can pay commission only. They don’t monitor their team’s activities
and are frustrated when they don’t produce.

The kicker is this same company then bitches and moans about not being able to afford the sales tools
needed to improve their team’s efficiency. They do nothing to help themselves, yet complain about high
turnover and a lack of revenue.

So… What Gives?

Part of the reason for the lack of effective training, or any training in many cases, is due to companies not
knowing how to do it themselves, or knowing where to start. The good news is you don’t have to be the
expert.

There’s a variety of resources available for you to provide training that will actually help develop your
sales associates skill set to start winning deals instead of losing them. Your goal should be to empower
salespeople to learn. You’re a leader – lead.

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Industry Specific Training Program
The quickest and easiest way to start improving your team’s skill set is to look for an online or virtual solu-
tion. The best program for storm restoration companies is right at the tip of your fingers.

SVG University is the first virtual online training platform specifically designed for the contracting indus-
tries. They offer a specialized program for each role within your company.

Using this type of program with your team makes sure that everyone gets the same message, and the
same type of training from the start of their time with your company. Because it was created by one of the
best in the industry, you don’t have to worry about the wrong strategies being taught.

Free Resources
There’s thousands, if not millions, of free resources you can use to
implement ongoing training. You can teach different sales techniques
in your meetings by finding things like blog posts that match your
organization’s philosophies.

You won’t agree with everything out there, and that’s fine. Use the
resources that fit to your processes, but don’t be afraid to be creative
and try new things.

There’s even an eBook with the best sales psychologies specifically

for the door to door industry on SPOTIO’s website. If you want an
example of how important training is, download this book now. It not
only covers the importance of training, but there’s multiple topics you
can teach today.

A few of the trainings covered are:

• How to use the 6 Principles Of Persuasion In A Sales Pitch

• How To Close More Sales Using The Right Tone
• How Kenny Brooks Gave The Best Sales Pitch Ever

Make Training Fun

Training isn’t always the first thing that salespeople want to do, but it’s absolutely necessary. Some sales
reps may not know how much they like what they’re doing when they first start. It might be because
they’re not having much success, or it could be because it’s not a career for them yet.

You want to find candidates in the recruiting process who understand the difference between having a
sales job vs sales career. These are the people who will produce results you can brag about.

43
Anthony Delmedico said it best:

Making training fun keeps everyone engaged

and helps them to learn the techniques being
taught. Develop the next Million Dollar Producer
in your organization using different training
tactics. Here’s a few games you can play, which
you can find more information on in the Top
Sales Psychologies for Door to Door Sales Reps
eBook.

• Objection Jeopardy
• Objection Bingo
• Hot Potato
• Objection Flashcards

44
 section five
Ongoing Domination
Continuing to Get New
Customers
Now that you’ve sold your first 100 deals in a new storm, you need a plan of attack to continue
dominating.

The Initial Push

When a storm first hits, it’s crazy busy. Everything moves fast and
furious.

You’re in a mad rush to get new customers under a contract or an

agreement immediately. That’s your only focus and your competition
is doing the exact same thing. They’re hitting the area just as hard as
you.

Every minute you waste is a potential customer lost to these fools. So

you go all Bruce Lee on any competitor stepping onto your turf and
your team nails their targets.

You killed the game and want to keep this momentum going to get
well beyond just 100 sales.

Revisit After The First Month

Drew is right, which leads us to the first thing we want to do after the first month of a storm. This strategy
is especially effective if you were working in the center of the storm or the area that had the most dam-
age. These locations have the highest amount of competition.

So if there’s so many people working the same area, why would you want to go back? The most common
thought is that if it was so competitive, there would be no one left to sell to… Wrong.

Roofs Going Up
The competitive nature of a storm environment means that things will quick. When you start seeing roofs
go up in a neighborhood, you know it’s time to head back out that way. You especially want to hit the
areas that had the most boots on the ground.

The first company often gets extremely busy and doesn’t have time to work on every house. Because
they can’t complete every job, it means there’s plenty of opportunity for you to surpass 100 deals in a
hurry.

When you rework these territories, you’ll find a lot of customers that already have their insurance pa-
perwork. All that’s left for you to do is complete the job. It’s for this exact reason you don’t want to stop
prospecting.

46
Plan Of Attack
There’s three steps to continue annihilating sales goals when roofs start going up.

1. Find where you want to prospect

2. Focus your team’s efforts in that area
3. Verify, measure, manage

#1 – Find Where To Prospect

There’s a couple different methods to find where you want to prospect after the initial surge in activity.
The first is to use the metrics available to you to determine where you had the most success initially.

Look for the areas you had the highest conversion rate so you can use your active installs as referenc-
es to knock doors around their neighbors. This will also allow you to get referrals from you current jobs.
Don’t forget that referrals are your highest converting, cheapest leads.

Next, you want to determine the territories your team worked with the highest amount of potential cus-
tomers remaining. You want to revisit locations that are densely populated with homeowners.

If you use a canvassing software, this will be an ex-

tremely fast and easy process because you can choose
the statuses to filter your pins by. For example, if you
have a “Follow Up” status, you can choose this op-
tion and see every pin in this status on a map to know
where your team should revisit.

The last way to determine where you want to prospect

is based on the swaths. Interactive Hail Maps will allow
you to zoom in to get a peek of the neighborhood and
you can go through this process like you did the first
time.

#2 – Focusing Efforts
Territory management is one of the most important factors in achieving your goals and getting the max-
imum amount of production from your team. We’ll use it as a way to get laser focused and eliminate
distractions.

Creating and assigning territories to your sales reps makes it visual. When it’s visual, then it becomes real.
Being able to see something on a map is much different than a manager just saying, “Hey go down to
Main & 10th Street and work near the school. That’s going to be your territory.”

When you can put it on the map for them, it forces them to own it. It’s their territory and it will require their
full attention because there’s going to be no excuse if any stones are left unturned.

Focusing prevents what we call “paralysis by analysis.” What this means is when a storm hits and you just
tell them to go get it in a storm that’s 20 – 30 miles long, they’re going to be driving around for 2 weeks
searching for an area to work.

47
They need to find the houses with the “right home value,” they need it to “feel good,” they need it to “look
good,” and it takes them forever. Don’t kid yourself – it happens. This just slows you down. By putting in
the time before and creating territories, you’re team is able to get out there and just grind.

Here’s the takeaway with being able to focus their efforts from territory management: You have to hit it
hard in the beginning, but you’re not going to have to ask your team to hit 100 doors every day for the
next 12 months. The point of being so strategic is that you’ll eventually be working off referrals.

#3 – Verify, Measure, Manage

The final piece of this puzzle is killing your sales numbers,
like you did getting your first 100 deals.

The image below is a never-ending circle of verify, mea-

sure, manage, repeat. It goes round and round like the
wheels on the bus.

Verify

Verify that your sales team is performing the activities that

lead to sales.

Measure

Measure specific metrics – the activities that lead to sales

that you verified were completed.

Manage

Manage based on the metrics that have been tracked and measured.

Let’s Go A Little Bit Deeper

To crush our sales numbers, we’ll follow this process. When we verify that our canvassers and sales reps
are completing activities in the field, we know that they’re actually knocking doors when and where they
say they are. Later on in the sales process, it probably going to be verifying they’re following up and push-
ing through the contract.

It’s also important to prove they’re work-

ing their territory and not bouncing
around if we’re going to spend the time to
determine the best areas to work. This is
where SPOTIO comes into play. It’s exact-
ly what the platform was designed to do.

Perhaps the most important is measure

because it’s the step that always seems
to be added by sales managers. They
might already do, or know, about the oth-
er two, but the measuring we’re talking
about is next level.

48
It’s not this:

Manager: Hey, how did it go today? How did you do out there?

Sales Rep: I did good.

Manager: Okay, great. Did you get any sales?

Sales Rep: No.

Manager: Oh, but you made some good contacts? Great. So you’re feeling really confident that
you’re going to have some paperwork to bring back? Okay, great.

Then all of a sudden you wake up at the end of the month, you don’t have a damn thing sold, and you’re
wondering why.

We’re going to get much more in-depth when we measure, and we’ll track 5 specific metrics:

1. # of Attempts
2. # of Contacts / Contact Rate
3. Qualified Rate
4. # of Leads / Lead Rate
5. # of Sales / Closing %

Now that we’re on the right path for success, we’re going to manage our team based on the metrics
we’ve tracked and measured. You’ll set SMART sales goals that are challenging but attainable. Because
you have realistic targets, you can use these to uncover problem areas and determine where your team
needs additional training.

Just Remember
How to dominate new markets and rework them for continued success is achieved with smart territo-
ry management. Step one, find where you want to prospect. Step two, focus your team’s effort in that
area, and step three, freaking kill your sales numbers by verifying, measuring, and managing your sales
activities.

Knocking Active Installs

Just two short weeks ago a canvasser scheduled an appointment with a homeowner that resulted in your
company getting one of its largest projects ever. First of all, way to go Mr. Canvasser.

Today, the install is finally beginning. This is a great opportunity for your company to get some additional
exposure at the ridiculously low cost of free. This is a great situation to be in, and the absolute perfect
time to go knock on some doors around the neighborhood.

49
Social Proof Says…
Social proof is one of the 6 principles of persuasion, and says that, “whether it’s consciously or uncon-
sciously, people pay attention to what other people around them are doing.” Essentially, people do things
because someone else did it first. The principles of persuasion aim to guide the buyer’s decision-making
process.

There’s never a better time or opportunity to use these than when you have a homeowner who’s given
you their business and an icebreaker to start new conversations. Thanks to this trusting soul, your sales
reps now have a variety of reasons and excuses to go visit the houses around them, and a reference they
can use in their introduction.

Stake Signs
Before you start knocking doors in the neighborhoods of your current jobs, stop for just a moment and
put on your “marketing hat.” You have a unique opportunity to build some brand recognition and make
homeowners aware of your company before you even step foot in the area.

Stake signs are a very well-known staple in the door to door sales industry that shouldn’t be overlooked
in the slightest. If you put a sign in the front yard of your active installs, each time a homeowner in that
neighborhood drives up or down their street, they’re going to see your company’s name, colors and logo.

How will they not know your name if they see it every day?

Don’t Forget About The Competition

When you put your company’s stake sign in the front lawn of your active installs it’s like starting a turf war
with your competitors.

Like, “Hey buddy… See that? Yeah, that’s all me. Now go kick rocks
somewhere else pal.”
Okay, maybe it’s not quite like that, but you get
the idea. When a sales rep from another company
sees that you have a couple signs in a neighbor-
hood, what do you think runs through their mind?
More likely than not, they don’t want to work there
because they feel like the area has already been
picked over and they’re just wasting their time.

This is a great opportunity to push other salespeo-

ple away from an area, leaving more opportunity for
your team. Don’t underestimate the power that stake
signs can have. Just because they don’t automati-
cally lead to someone calling you saying they want a
new roof, and they want it now, doesn’t mean they’re
not effective.

50
5 Step Process For Canvassing Near Active
Installs
To see results from working near your current jobs, the most important factor is to have a clear system
that guides you through all of the how-to’s. You need to prepare in order to succeed. Establishing a suc-
cessful canvassing program in a storm market is an up-front investment of your time and resources that is
more than worth the payoff.

1. Know where your active installs are

2. Create & assign territories around installs in progress
3. Have a script
4. Canvass – Don’t sell
5. Collect homeowner information at the door

Generating leads near the installs you have in progress starts with understanding where you’ve already
had success. Map out your current projects so that it’s easier to know where you need to send your team.

Whether you’re still rockin’ Google Maps and highlighters, or you’ve progressed to 2017 with the rest of
us, having a visual saves you time and makes you more accurate. The easiest way to see the location
of your active jobs is to use a customer mapping software that will give you a physical representation to
determine the most optimal routes for your team.

The complete guide to mapping sales territories shows you how to create territories around the group of
customers or prospects you want your team to work. Your goal is to set them up for success by putting
them in neighborhoods where they can use your jobs as references in their pitch.

Once you’ve put your team in the right area, there’s a variety of options available for them to break the
ice using the installs you have in progress. We’ll cover those below, but the most important thing to know
about a script is you need to have one.

Remember, their script needs to be focused on making contact with homeowners to introduce your
company and service, and set an appointment. They’re not trying to sell the service, they’re selling the
appointment.

Regardless of the outcome, your team needs to collect homeowner information at the door. There’s so
much value in having a prospect’s contact information. Getting this information gives you better insight
into where you’re having success and is a great opportunity to nurture potential customers that you don’t
get on the spot.

Sample Scripts
Having success at the door requires a very special and unique skill set that enables your team to go out
and get a lead on command. Don’t focus too much on the word “script.” This just means you’ve built a
strategic approach for your team to introduce themselves, your company and your service.

Your script is a guide for canvassers to follow that helps them know what to say in every possible situ-
ation. It’s not a tool for them to go out and just repeat robotically. Knowing what to say is only half the
battle, the other half is in their delivery and non-verbal communication. The good news is when your team
works near installs in progress, they have a variety of introductions available to build rapport and establish

51
credibility that won’t get the door shut in their face.

The people behind the door aren’t expecting you, which means it’s essential for sales reps to have a rea-
son for their visit and a clear message.

The Most Basic Approach

“Good morning! How are you?”

This will work on some people, but very few. Some people are just friendly, that’s all there is to it. They’ll
respond to you simply because they were asked a question and they’re nice people. You should have
lead generators on your team that can do better than this, but it’s always better than being stuck and
freezing.

Make It Better

“Hey man, how’s it going? My name is Billy Bob with ABC Company.
What’s your name?” [Wait for response]. “Great to meet you Little
Johnny!” [Shake their hand].
By simply adding a little bit more to the most basic ap-
proach, you’re coming off more personable.

Remember, you’re just having a conversation. Most peo-

ple are more receptive when you talk to them in a way
you normally would, but it still needs to be respectful and
professional.

More importantly, you’re getting the name of the per-

son you’re speaking with at the very beginning of the
conversation.

This will help you throughout the pitch. Using the first
name of the person throughout the conversation makes
them feel important and immediately grabs their attention
if they start to lose focus.

The Neighborly Approach

“Hey, good evening! My name is Billy Bob and I just wanted to show you
the damage I found on Jimmy’s house, and let you know I’ll be over as
soon as I finish with him.”
The neighbor approach is a good icebreaker to get the conversation going.

You’re immediately trying to pique their interest by offering them something for free. From here, you
would explain why you wanted to do the test and discuss the benefits and value to the homeowner.

You’re making the prospect feel important by telling them you only had a few minutes and you chose
them to do this free test or service for.

52
The Straight Shooter Approach

“Hi, I’m Billy Bob and we’re working with some of your neighbors to get
their roof replaced. Out of curiosity, have you had your insurance adjuster
out yet?”
Customers hate to feel deceived and love honesty. Sometimes all you have to do to set an appointment is
be a straight shooter and get to the point.

While this opener can be effective, it’s of-

ten viewed as a little bit of a gamble. In the
end, the consumers who are interested
generally tend to be pretty good quality.

The reason this approach is viewed as a

little risky is because you’re going to get
an answer from the potential customer as
to whether or not this is something they’re
willing to look into pretty early on. This
can work to your benefit rather quickly
because you’re going to be able to gauge
their interest level within the first 10 sec-
onds of your time at the door.

If someone is interested right off the bat, well then…. HELL YEAH! Unfortunately, this is rarely the case.
Where the straight shooter approach harms canvassers is its inability to get deep into the pitch to demon-
strate the value of your company’s service.

53
 section six
Final Overview
Final Overview
DETERMINING WHERE TO WORK
4 Methods To Determine Where To Canvass

1. Look at the hail maps available like Interactive Hail Maps

2. Look for signs of damage
3. Look for emergency reports
4. Contact local material suppliers

4 Strategies To Working New Storms

1. Work the most severe damage

2. Work the epicenter of the storm
3. Work the outskirts of the storm
4. Work territories near customers and installs

THE IMPORTANCE OF URGENCY

4 Proactive Strategies

1. They actively track the storm’s path

2. They prep their team to be ready as soon as the storm is finished
3. They talk to suppliers before a storm & ask them to send information once it hits
4. They utilize radar detected storm impact alerts

WORKING YOUR NUMBERS

Set SMART sales goals to achieve revenue targets. Determine exactly what you need to reach every goal
you set.

# of Sales

# of Sales = Revenue Target / Average Deal Size

Number of Sales Reps

# of Sales Reps = # of Sales / Average # of Sales per Rep

Number of Leads Needed

# of Leads = # of Sales / Average Closing %

Number of Qualified Prospects Needed

# of Conversations = # of Leads / Lead Rate

Number of Conversations Needed

# of Conversations = # of Qualified Prospects / Qualified Rate

55
Number of Attempts

# of Attempts = # of Answers / Contact Rate

TERRITORY MANAGEMENT
The ideal territory size = 150 – 250 houses

Too big of a territory leads to one of two things:

1. Fewer attempts will be made at each door

2. It will take a significantly greater amount of time to canvass the area

KNOCKING SCHEDULE
3 Steps For Creating A Schedule

1. Each rep will knock every door in their territory a total of 3 times
2. Determine the 3 time periods your team has the highest contact rate
3. Rotate starting points so the same doors aren’t knocked at the same time each day

USING METRICS
4 Metrics To Measure In Storm Restoration

1. Qualified Rate
2. Lead Rate
3. Contact Rate
4. Leads per Day

Daily Expectations = 3 – 4 leads per day / 100 door knocks

THE BEST IN THE BUSINESS

The BEST piece of advice to generate more door to door leads in a new storm?

EFFECTIVE TRAINING

CONTINUING TO GET NEW CUSTOMERS

There’s three steps to continue annihilating sales goals when roofs start going up:

1. Find where you want to prospect

2. Focus your team’s efforts in that area
3. Verify, measure, manage

Verify

Verify that your sales team is performing the activities that lead to sales.

56
Measure

Measure specific metrics – the activities that lead to sales that you verified were completed.

Manage

Manage based on the metrics that have been tracked and measured.

57
11816 Inwood Road
Suite 162
Dallas, TX 75244
866.212.1250
info@spotio.com